When using Virtru Pro, you can fully control all aspects of any secure email — both before and after you send it. This ranges from message encryption, to setting expiration dates for secure messages you’re sending (or have already sent) with Virtru.

The expiration date feature can be accessed via the Virtru protection bar when you’re composing your secure email. Once set, it will revoke access for all recipients to your email once the selected time has elapsed. Expiration can be updated or disabled at any time.

1. Start by clicking “Compose” to start writing your new email message, then make sure Virtru Protection is togged to “ON”.

Expiration (or any other protection features) can be updated or disabled at any time. You can do this simply by finding the secure email in your Sent Mail Box, opening the sent secure email and updating the time frame in your Virtru Protection Bar.

View in Gmail

View in Outlook

Updating Your Expiration Settings From Your Virtru Dashboard

You can update or disable protection settings on any Virtru-secured email, anytime, via your Virtru Dashboard.

3. Update your Expiration Settings (or any other necessary protection settings in the right side bar displayed).

4. Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the side bar for these changes to take effect.

Virtru’s PDF Watermarking feature adds each recipient’s email address as a watermark to any encrypted PDFs that you attach to a particular Virtru email. When PDF Watermarking is enabled, recipients will be prompted to view all PDF attachments from Virtru’s Secure Reader, and they will not have the option to download the file. Currently, Virtru users cannot enable PDF Watermarking without also disabling downloading of the attachments they send.

When you turn on ‘Disable Forwarding’ to a Virtru email that you’ve already sent out, any future recipients that have that email forwarded to them will be unable to read the contents. However, recipients who had the email forwarded to them before ‘Disable Forwarding’ was turned on will still be able to read the email contents. It is important to note that ‘Disable Forwarding’ only applies to emails forwarded after this policy was selected for a particular email.

To see how you can send a Virtru-encrypted email with Gmail/G Suite, please watch this video:

Yes! If your recipient doesn’t have Virtru installed, they can use our Secure Reader to read your encrypted message, open any attachments and to reply back to you. There is no installation and no clunky process involved.

Simply check out our quick video to see what this process looks like for your recipient. We’ve also included the step-by-step instructions below so you can have a quick look.

Instructions to securely read the email:

1. Click the button labeled “Unlock Message”. A new tab will open.

2. Within this tab, you are asked to select your email account. If your email is not listed, click “My Email is not here” and enter your email information.

3. In order to verify your identity, you are given two options. If you’d rather receive an email to verify your identity, click “Send Me an Email.” Logging in with Google? Please skip ahead to Step 6.

4. You will receive a message instructing you to return to your inbox for the activation email. Please note that the activation email must be opened in the browser indicated in the email title.

5. The body of the email will contain a message with information regarding the activation process and the selected browser. Complete the activation process by clicking the button labeled, “Activate Me”.

6. A new tab titled “Secure Reader | Virtru” will open. Within this tab, you can now read the sender’s original message displayed in Virtru’s Secure Reader.

7. If you wish to respond securely to the email, you can either compose a quick reply at the bottom of the screen or click “Secure Reply” at the top.

8. At the top left of the Reply box, you can select whether to reply to the sender only or all of the recipients on the email by selecting the “Reply” option. After you finish composing your message, click “Send Secure Reply”.

If a recipient wishes to secure reply with an attachment, this can’t be done within the secure reader. To send a secure attachment, they will need to first install our free plugin.

Here’s a template you can use to notify your recipients that you’ll be using Virtru.

Subject: [YOUR COMPANY’S NAME]’s New Email Tool

Hi [YOUR RECIPIENT’S NAME],

Some of the emails I’ll be sending to you might look a bit different going forward, and I want to let you know why.

We recently adopted a new tool called Virtru here at [YOUR COMPANY’S NAME]’ to encrypt our emails and attachments. Virtru makes it easy for us to share sensitive information with you in a safe and compliant manner.

When you receive a message from me that was encrypted with Virtru, it will look similar to this:

From here, all you need to do is click ‘Unlock Message’ and follow the prompts that appear. You don’t have to create any new passwords or accounts, or go to a portal. It’s super easy.

If you want to read and respond to my Virtru messages directly from your inbox, you can download Virtru’s free product here. Otherwise, you can access my messages from your web browser using the above instructions – as long as you are not using Internet Explorer 9 or older.

[YOUR COMPANY’S NAME]’ has benefited from the easy protection Virtru provides. I hope you will, too.

Please email or call me with any questions, and check out Virtru’s FAQ page if needed.

Thanks, [YOUR NAME]
[YOUR PHONE NUMBER]

To send a secure attachment, simply ensure your Virtru protection is turned on before you add the attachment to your email. The attachment will send secure along with the message.

For detailed instructions on how to send a Virtru secured message with a secure attachment, please view the video below: